"Greatest Ever" Lists - A Modern Evolution

As we are now on the eve of the top 10 for the latest iteration the CW50, I thought it might be interesting to look at some of the better-known rankings of the past 15 years to assess how such lists have (or haven't) evolved, and to see how CW's opinions compare with the wider cricketing world.

First up - in 1997, John Woodcock conducted an exercise for The Times where he ranked his top 100 cricketers. The top 10 was:

In 2006, Geoff Armstrong produced a book ranking the 100 Greatest Cricketers, interestingly split into nine teams of XI, plus a 100th man. His goal was to balance out the rankings will all the types of cricketers who make up a team, particularly wicketkeepers who are generally overlooked in such exercises. His First XI was ranked thus:

interesting point The Sean.....there does seem to be a modern bias creeping in I suppose

And smalishah's avatar is the most classy one by far Jan certainly echoes the sentiments of CW

Yeah we don't crap in the first world; most of us would actually have no idea what that was emanating from Ajmal's backside. Why isn't it roses and rainbows like what happens here? PEWS's retort to Ganeshran on Daemon's picture depicting Ajmal's excreta

What leaps out is that, despite the huge quantity and diversity of cricketers through history, the same few are consistently perceived to have risen above all others. While only three players (Bradman, Sobers and Hobbs) appear on every one of the lists above, there are numerous others - Grace, Barnes, Hammond, Imran, Richards, Tendulkar and Warne - who appear on nearly all of them and who seem universally acknowledged by the wider cricketing world to be just that bit greater than the rest.

The similarity in these selections isn't particularly surprising, given they were all formed over a 12 year period and it is natural that perceptions wouldn't have changed too much over a relatively short period of time. Our new CW ranking won't differ greatly from those above - again, understandably - but we will have one brand new entrant into the Top 10 who doesn't feature in any previous list. And IMO his entry into such exclusive company is well deserved.

And so ends my attempt to break the record for the most consecutive posts that only I care about.

The other lists hold merit,and include Cricketers who truly deserve to be considered among the top 10 of all time.From these lists however,the only name that i think doesn't deserve to be in a top 10 list is Gavaskar.

Because spinners like him are incredibly rare. They're on par with the great bowlers of their time (slightly more expensive and not as fast strikers) but who can bowl all day and on any surface. Warne, even further, was an incredible matchwinner and rose to the occasion a lot on his career. It's probably why he regularly overshadowed McGrath; even if the latter ended up with better figures.

Because spinners like him are incredibly rare. They're on par with the great bowlers of their time (slightly more expensive and not as fast strikers) but who can bowl all day and on any surface. Warne, even further, was an incredible matchwinner and rose to the occasion a lot on his career. It's probably why he regularly overshadowed McGrath; even if the latter ended up with better figures.

why not Murli? and in 2000 his career was only half done, I know he won Australia 99 WC semi final and Final but that doesn't automatically make him top 5 cricketers of the century.